"I'm not going with you," reiterated Nestley, resolutely, as the artist stepped into the road.
"'Nobody axed you, sir,' she said," retorted Beaumont, with a sneer, sauntering on. "Good-bye; a pleasant journey."
Nestley looked at the sky, out of which the red light was rapidly dying. A few stars glimmered in the pale flush of colour, and the chill breeze was growing colder while the mists lay over the fen lands like a thick white veil. He was cold and hungry, so the prospect of getting something to eat and a night's rest instead of trudging back wearily to Shunton, decided him. He shook himself impatiently, made a few steps forward, then paused irresolutely.
"Bah! Why should I mind?" he said angrily to himself. "Beaumont can do me no harm now. After five years I hardly see how his influence can affect me. I'll chance it, anyhow."
Away in the distance he could see the tall form of the artist strolling easily along, so, having paused a moment to light his pipe, he strode rapidly after him. Even as he did so there flashed across his mind, with the rapidity of lightning, the phrase, "Lead us not into temptation," and a shiver, not caused by the chill wind, passed over his body, but he dismissed the warning with an uneasy laugh and walked on quickly in the track of his evil genius.
"Much sorrow didst thou bring to me of old, Tainted my life by poisonous words and deeds, Turned holy thoughts to evil--made me dread To face the fearless looks of honest men, Lest they should spy my quick learnt devilries, And cry, 'Off, off; this fellow is a knave.'"
Garsworth was one of those queer, old-fashioned villages which, owing to their isolated positions, yet retain the primitive simplicity of earlier ages. The nearest railway station, Duxby Junction, to which steam and electricity continually carried the news of the world, was fully twenty miles distant, so that in this out of-the-way village the rustics heard but little of the doings of the nations, being content to remain in a state of Arcadian ignorance as their forefathers had done before them.
There was not even a stage-coach to Duxby, and the only means of communication was by the carriers' carts, which went weekly along the dusty high road, drawn lazily by their sleek horses. The nearest market town was Shunton, almost as quiet and primitive as Garsworth, and the sturdy farmers going there on market days sold their cattle and wheat, picked up such small items of news as had drifted thither from Duxby, then returned to their homes perfectly satisfied with life and with themselves. Well-to-do folks were these yeomen, for many rich farms lay hidden in the wide fen lands--farms which had descended from father to son through many generations, and as neither agrarian agitation nor vexed questions of rents had penetrated to this remote spot, they tilled their lands, looked up to their landlords, and pursued their monotonous lives in peace.